Importance of Knowing How

Knowing How

Recently I taught an NLP group and during the program I helped them learn more about how to create rapport. The interesting thing I observed from this program is that like most people the students are were able to create rapport with others easily before I even taught them how. Knowing this, you may wonder why I taught them about rapport. The answer why is very simple.

Fundamentally, rapport is the ability to create a connection with another person, so you both feel like you like each other. Think about how you create rapport, especially with your friends. If I asked you to teach another person how you create rapport could you do it?

The reason I teach rapport is although most people can do it easily, it is all unconscious. In other words they do not actually know how they do rapport! Not knowing how you do it, restricts you from using it in those situations where you would not do it naturally and you would benefit from doing it consciously. As part of my business, I see many different types of clients, some I get on with very easily. While there are others that I struggle with initially. With hypnotherapy clients in particular as they have to close their eyes for the process, I need them to be able to listen to my voice. For this to occur I must have a good level of rapport. Knowing how to create rapport with another person means that I can do it in those situations where it is not happening naturally. All because I have become consciously aware of it.

Think about what tasks you currently do that you only really know how to do unconsciously. Are you surprised how many come to mind? Think about driving a car, tying your shoe laces or even reading a book. Many of these tasks do not require you to do it consciously. However, by knowing how to do a task both consciously and unconsciously, could actually make the difference between you being successful in your endeavour verses having to re-do your efforts.

I remember a presentation I went to where the speaker had climbed Mt Everest 2 or 3 times. He described what he needed to do to climb the mountain. He also mentioned that every now and then you would find a ladder on the ground. This generally meant that there was a crevasse under the ladder. Since he had climbed many mountains he knew how to climb. He was also aware of his ability to climb so that he could keep himself and his team safe. He was both consciously aware of what was important and unconsciously aware of how to climb so that he kept himself safe.

To learn to bring a task into the conscious such as rapport, what you do is to observe yourself or others in doing the tasks and identify the steps that they go through to do the task. If you were watching a person drive a manual car, you would notice the steps to change gear are: take foot off accelerator, put foot on clutch pedal, depress clutch pedal, change gear using the gear stick, let foot slowly off the clutch and back onto the accelerator, depress the accelerator.

You can learn to bring those unconscious tasks and behaviours into your conscious awareness so that you are able to use them when you would not naturally do so.